The organizing bug

Well, it’s summertime, and somehow it seems that for me summer and home organization/improvement seem to go together.

Last year, I renovated the bedroom – painting the walls a lavish, dark red, and adding real bed and dresser furniture, care of my lovely momma. There are still a few upgrades I want to add to the bedroom – a new mattress, for one, a few more bins/baskets for some excess clothes we tend to keep out, and some wall art. I dream of getting this nice space-saving sewing workstation, too. Admittedly, it’s not the same color as our current bedroom furniture, but it folds up small (essential in a NYC apartment), and it’s on wheels, so I can easily wheel it out to the living room if the hubby is sleeping. Maybe I can get it later this year for my birthday (I’ll be 25!) or our 2 year anniversary.

This year, Husband and I are both spending lots and lots of time at home. He’s been working from home for a year and a half now, and now it looks like I’ll be joining him. I work from home many hours a week on T! stuff, and I also do data analysis for the lab from here too. If I start pursuing freelance science writing, I’ll be doing that from home as well.  This also means we use the kitchen more since I’m home more to cook and prep food. (Husband typically feeds himself, but rarely chooses to cook anything elaborate.) We’ve accumulated a fair number of things that no longer fit on our various media shelves, and we also have new business related things that we need to store. So I’ve been thinking mostly about how I can upgrade the living room and the kitchen.  Finally, I’ve also just been thinking about what our living patterns have evolved into and how we could make more efficient and fun use of our living space.

So today I made up an organizing list. I started by writing out everything I could think of that needs a place to store. I categorized them by room, including closets as rooms. Then I thought about what we actually use daily, monthly, or only seasonally, and planned the storage location accordingly – making the things we use most often the most easily accessible. Next, I considered what would be the best storage solution for each item – drawers, boxes, bins, or shelves. I chose drawers or open-lidded boxes or bins for things we use often, and boxes and shelves for everything else. Things used only seasonally will be stored in lidded boxes on high shelves, in closets and out of the way.

I’ve picked out items and made a plan for everything. Now to buy the storage furniture and containers – a little at a time. Even though I can’t buy it all right now, I enjoy planning and organizing so much that I don’t care. I ordered a little bit of it, some really cheap organizers from Amazon.com, and I’m on my way to more efficient living…

Crafty Creations 1: My first shirt

I learned how to sew as a child, because my mother used to sew, and I asked her to teach me. I sewed myself a skating costume around the age of 10 or 11, but I must admit it…it had no taste at all. After that, I pretty much didn’t bother doing the sewing myself, but I mostly helped my mom to design the dresses she made for me to practice in. Sometimes she made my competition dresses, too, and then I’d also help to design the beading patterns.

I loved to design the styles to go with my music, and then I would figure out how to alter the pattern so that we’d make what I had dreamed up. My mother always said she didn’t know how I could do that; she didn’t feel comfortable designing her own patterns herself. I actually think this was one of my earlier experiences with thinking like an engineer – I loved to think of how the pieces would go together, unfolding the fabric in my mind to see the overall patterns. Then I would tell my mom how to alter the pattern and how to put the pieces together after she cut them out.

I hadn’t had any experience with sewing since I quit skating (7 years ago – wow such a long time and yet sometimes it still hurts to think of it), but last summer I decided to sew myself a shirt, mostly out of a desire for thriftiness. I went to Target and bought a string tie-dying kit from the craft/kid’s aisle, and then I went home and opened a pack of sheets that I had gotten from my mother-in-law for Christmas a year ago. I had never used them because they have lace on them and I don’t care for lacy bedsheets (I don’t think I should subject my husband to that). I got out a shirt with a similar design to the one I imagined I could make with the bedsheets. Then I measured myself and the dimensions of the shirt, and I crafted a pattern to make the shirt from scratch.

Then I cut out and tie-dyed the pieces using the string tie-dye kit (this involved wrapping the string around the twisted fabric and letting it soak in hot water), and I let them dry. Next, I stitched the pieces together – by hand, because I didn’t have a sewing machine at the time. But I found it to be rather relaxing, as repetitive as it was. As I was stitching it together, I tried it on and pinned any adjustments that I needed to make. At the end, I had this shirt, which I like very much:

I actually didn’t complete the shirt until a few months later, having left it undone with only one unsewn seam for that long. So for the holidays (Christmas to my parents and family anyhow, winter solstice/Human Light/general time of joy and family to me), I asked my mother for a sewing machine, and she got me one, which I love! A later Craft Creations post will be about my first sewing project with the machine – a bohemian skirt.

I Heart Science

After my last post about that cute t-shirt I like, I decided to play around with some t-shirt design using a site I have ordered from before: Spreadshirt. So I played a little bit and I decided to make a graphic of my own and upload it. Here it is:

I Heart Science

So I played around with that and I put it on some shirts, like this one:

I Heart Science Jersey Tee

You can check them out in my spreadshop. If by any chance you happen to be interested. At all.

Cute crafty aprons

meg, originally uploaded by angry chicken.

So I’ve been getting really into my creative and crafty side ever since I got a sewing machine for Christmas. I was checking out some of the most popular crafty blogs on the web, and I decided to add Angry Chicken to my google reader, so I’ll remember to stop by and check it out when I’m feeling crafty.

The author of Angry Chicken has a blog called Tie One On which is full of pictures of aprons that readers have made and sent pictures of, to go with different themes. The last theme was polka dot, and the Flickr gallery is full of cute and adorable aprons. I do not own and have never worn an apron, not since my childhood, but I splash myself when I’m washing the dishes and I think it would be nice to have one. So I’ll probably put it on my list of projects to consider at some point. The picture I chose here is of one that I think is so delightful, somehow retro and yet modern at the same time. I love the fit!  And then I did a little more digging and found that the person who made it for the Tie One On project has a crafty blog and she has started publishing her own sewing patterns, and that very apron has a sewing pattern available!  YAY!

American Craft Museum

There are so many museums in NYC that it’s hard to know about all of them, or even many of them.  I’ve been living here for over 5 years now, and I still learn of new ones I hadn’t heard of.  Today, I was browsing different sites with quilting ideas (I’ve been LOVING my sewing machine) and one of the pages mentioned the American Craft Museum.  It sounds really neat – apparently there are quilts on display, and I’m sure other crafts that I’d enjoy.  I must go!

Upon further inspection, it appears that the American Craft Museum is now a part of the Museum of Art & Design, which I have heard of.  Still, there are so many unique museums here, it’s really neat!  I’ll have to go to this one on a Thursday evening, which is their “pay what you want”  night.

Quilting and Sewing Projects

So the thing I asked my mom for this holiday was a sewing machine. At the end of this past summer, fed up with the same clothes all the time, totally broke, but always into crafting, I decided to make myself a shirt. I think it was rather clever of me, as I used unopened bedsheets with an embroidered eyelet trim that my MIL had given me but I didn’t want (I’m not into frilly bedsheets, especially not for bed shared with Husband) to make a tie-dye fabric for my shirt. I incorporated the lace into the pattern, and I’m very happy with the result. The thing is, I hand-sewed the shirt, because we don’t have a sewing machine and if I coudn’t afford the $15-20 clothes at Target, I certainly couldn’t afford a sewing machine. It took a bit of a while but I didn’t mind, it was kind of relaxing. I finally finished it (I had left undone about an hour of work for two months) and I want to make more. I also had been looking into quilting, and I decided I’d really like to learn how to do that. In particular, I’m into the patchwork designs that make up the quilt top.

So for Christmas my mom got me a sewing a machine – or rather, she printed out details on the one she promises to get for me, as it didn’t make sense to lug a sewing machine from her home to the Midwest on the plane for me to lug it back to NYC on my plane home. She also got me a book on quilting, which I read through most of on the plane back. So I’m really excited about this! I’ve been thinking of different ideas and what I want to make first. It makes me happy just to think of all the things I can make – purses and bags, eyeglasses cases, table runners, place mats, napkins, pillows, quilts, oven mitts, curtains, ornaments, stuffed animals, long flowing skirts and dresses and shirts in tops in a Bohemian/hippie sort of style, baby quilts and wall-hangings for the newborns various people I know are having/recently had, and the list goes on. I can’t wait to get the machine and start getting acquainted with it! I promise I’ll share pictures here of my various projects.

Spiderweb cupcakes

I made these spiderweb cupcakes for my Halloween/Anniversary party last weekend. They’re actually red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting – mmm.

Here is the recipe I used:

 

Red velvet cupcakes w/cream cheese frosting

2 1/2	cups all-purpose flour
1	teaspoon salt
1/2	cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2	cups sugar
2	eggs
2	tablespoons cocoa powder
2	ounces water
2	ounces red food coloring
1	cup buttermilk
1	teaspoon vanilla extract
1	teaspoon white vinegar
1	teaspoon baking soda
cream cheese frosting
1 (8	ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2	cup unsalted butter, softened
2.5	cups powdered sugar
1	teaspoon vanilla extract

• < 60 mins Cupcakes
• United States Cupcakes
• Eggs/Dairy Cupcakes
• Winter Cupcakes
• Kid Pleaser Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 12 cupcake cups or line with paper liners.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add eggs and blend well.
4. Make a paste of cocoa and food coloring and add to the butter mixture.
5. Sift flour and salt togethr into this mixture.
6. One at a time, add the following ingredients: buttermilk, vanilla, and water.
7. In a small bowl, combine the vinegar and the baking soda. Fold it into the cake batter. Make sure it’s incorporated, but don’t beat it.
8. Pour the batter into the cupcake cups. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the cake springs back when touched.
9. Remove from oven and let cool for about 10 minutes, then turn out of pan and onto a rack to finish cooling completely.
10. Cream Cheese Frosting: Blend together the following: 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened, 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened, 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Blend until smooth.

Painting

Well, the bedroom is almost finished painting. Yesterday I painted a lot – I finished the trim, but ran out of trim paint for the last 3 cubic feet on the door. Then I got to painting the walls – 1/4 of them were still white, the rest needed more coats of paint. So now half the room is completely done, with 3 coats of the paint. We used Raspberry Truffle from Benjamin Moore. I actually used the new Aura paint, but that was because when I first went in, the salesperson told me that it was so good I didn’t need primer and I only needed one coat. He also sold me only one gallon even though I was sure I’d need more, because he said it goes on the walls so thin. I was skeptical, but he assured me, and so I took it and left. Well, 2 more gallons later and I’m out of paint and need more again. Moral of that story? Don’t believe salespeople when they make outrageous claims about how good the new paint is. One thin coat? Hah. Took 3 coats on each wall, and as I’m about out of paint again and not finished, in the end it’ll be about 3.5 gallons of paint for the whole room. My original calculations were that I’d need 3 gallons of paint plus tinted primer, so I guess in amount this isn’t that different, but the Aura is expensive and it’s been annoying that they keep telling me “No, you’ll only need this one gallon, more than that would be overkill” and then I have to make another trip to the store to get more paint, and if I had bought it all at once, it would have been mixed all into one container to ensure that the paint color exactly matches for the whole thing.

Here’s a picture of a corner that is finished, with part of the door in the picture, which is just about finished:

One thing to note, however, is that the amount of light in the picture is not the same as is naturally in the room; I had the lights on AND the flash, so the paint looks brighter than it actually appears in the normal lighting in the room. Still, you can see the walls are nice and even now. Once the furniture and other decorations are added, I’m pretty sure it will look awesome! (I was going to say it’ll be the best room in the apartment, but as this is a 1-bedroom, that’s not saying much.)

This is awesome

This is so cute:

I want to get one!  And it would be useful, as I’ve started sewing again.

Speaking of hand-crafted items, I just found the web 2.0 community of Etsy, and I love it!

Painting

Well I haven’t posted in a few days, including over the weekend. One of the reasons is because I’ve been very busy painting the walls of our bedroom. I had never painted a room before so it’s been an interesting experience. I’m not done yet though, because I’ve been taking only a little at a time – like 3-5 hours a day. I did the ceiling, the walls above the above molding, the upper molding, and the window frame. Now all that’s left is the walls and the molding by the floor, and the door and door frame. It should be easier now though because I won’t need the stepladder nearly so much, maybe only for cutting in by the top molding. So far it looks pretty good, but I am looking forward to the whole room being done and getting the furniture, so we can see how it looks when it’s not so empty.

It’s been a rough week overall. Not that things have been going badly; they are about the same. But I’ve been very down. Yesterday I cried like three times, and it’s basically for no good reason. But it was really emotional crying, like I could have just choked on the depth of emotion, the depth of sadness, that I was feeling. It really hasn’t been much fun, but Husband has been a great companion to help me through the feelings.

I won’t be posting much this week as I’m going to visit people for the 4th of July and the rest of the week. Happy 4th of July to my American blogging friends!